Every year my coworkers and I (and all of our families) attend ThatConference. It’s a family-oriented tech conference in Wisconsin, and it takes place at a gigantic water park. If you haven’t heard of it, you absolutely have to check it out. I’ve been going since 2012, and I can’t say enough good things about it.
About a week before the conference this year, I thought
It’d be cool to connect with other people who are interested in MAME.
After several iterations of MAME Front-ends, I think I’ve landed on something I can call “Done” (for now!)
History
2006 I used MameWAH 2007 I wrote my own front-end in VB.net, based on MameWAH (before it was open-sourced) 2010 Attempted a GPU-accelerated Silverlight front-end 2011 Created WomPF!, a WPF front-end with a rotating game-selector 2014 MAME Iron was born when I scrapped everything and rewrote from the ground up in C# 2016 MAME Iron becomes motion-activated with voice-recognition 2017 Scrapped everything again and rewrote from the ground up in WPF, this time with a focus on UI as well as UX.
I picked up a TV wall-mount bracket from Menard’s for like $6. The bracket has a handy built-in bubble level and I attached it to a 2x4. When I attached it to the sides of the cabinet, I only used one screw on each side (at the top of the 2x4) at first. This allowed me to hang the monitor on the bracket & pivot the 2x4 until I was happy with the angle that the monitor was sitting at.
The final post in a 3-part series showing off some tech I recently added.
I thought it would be cool to walk up to my MAME arcade cabinet, say “Play Pac-Man” and magically have that game start playing…so I did that, sorta. I have to press a button for it to start listening, but hopefully I can remove that and have it “always listening” (muhaha).
Here’s a quick video showing it in action, with my awesome 7-year old assistant If I say something like “Play Mortal Kombat”, MAMEIron will recognize that there’s more than one Mortal Kombat, and pop up a menu with the various flavors of Mortal Kombat (1, 2, 3, 4, Ultimate MK3, etc.
The second post in a 3-part series showing off some tech I recently added.
I wanted the cabinet lights to turn on when I walked up to it so I ordered some goodies from MadeInTheUSB.net (They sell a bunch of components that plug in via USB, and can be controlled via C#). Before I continue, I have to plug this company because of the amazing service I received.
I wasn’t sure exactly what I needed, but after exchanging a couple emails, I placed an order.
The first post in a 3-part series showing off some tech I recently added.
I wanted the arcade to “turn on” whenever someone walks up to it, so I wired up my MAME front-end, MAMEIron, to the webcam. Whenever someone comes into view of the webcam, or it senses a change in the environment (like a light turning on), the cabinet will “turn on” by fading from black into the front-end, with a little boot-up-sequence sound effect :)
I’ve been hesitant to seal up my cabinet because I had a major hurdle to overcome. My monitor. I have no way to turn it on without pressing the power button.
Well, (I’m embarrassed to even admit that I hadn’t checked long ago), the monitor will remember its on/off status if I kill power to it. This doesn’t really make sense to me, since it has a momentary type switch (as opposed to a regular on/off switch), but whatever…I’ll take it.
I’ve had these cup holders for a couple years, and I finally got around to putting them on. They have a nice gap in the side to allow for beer mugs coffee cups to fit right in. They also have a little drain at the bottom for when you’ve had too many “coffees” and can’t manage to remove your beverage without spilling it ;)
I’ve had this T-molding even longer. It took me a long time to find the right router bit (kinda pricey at ~$25, and I wasn’t 100% sure it was the right one), and I couldn’t cut the groove until I had everything painted.
I’ve made a lot of progress recently, and can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
After painting it, I reassembled it. I couldn’t bring myself to put the 25" tube tv back in, so instead I used a 22" LCD I had laying around. I’m more than happy with that decision. After numerous weeks’ worth of hard drive/raid/motherboard issues, I performed a midnight heart transplant and got everything working just in time for a party we were having.
What’s old is new again. I revived my old VB.NET front-end, rewrote it in C#, and named it MAME Iron.
Why MAME Iron you ask? It’s a MAME Front-end (Fe) and Fe is the symbol for Iron on the Periodic Table of Elements, of course!
Since I decided to ditch my 25" tube TV for a 22" LCD, I have a lot more pixels to work with. I also don’t have to use Comic Sans in Cyan anymore (the only font/color that would show up on that old, low-res display).
I built a new control panel since the previous one I had built was a proof-of-concept. This one is the same size and layout, but made with 5/8" MDF instead of the 3/4" oak laminate I had originally used.
I added a cutout in the middle for a 4-way joystick, and left a little room to the right of it for two buttons (to be added later).
I primed all the pieces, and they’re ready for paint.
Finally cut the slanted top/rear piece of the cabinet. The big hold-up was the table saw my dad gave me; I couldn’t figure out how to get it to cut the 45’s I needed.
It turns out the handle to unlock the blade is reverse-threaded (and unlabeled), so it took me a while to figure it out. (and by figure it out, I mean swear up a storm, throw things, and cracking the plastic handle).
I modified one of Oscar’s high-res MAME graphics to get rid of the purple flames & I added some white text with a blue glow to it. I scaled it down to the necessary size & had a friend print two different marquees. One is on 3/8" white acrylic, the other is on (I think) 1/4" clear acrylic. I won’t really be able to tell which one is better until I mount the 24" fluorescent light (which is wired & ready to go).
Since I’m putting a 27″ TV in here, I wanted the shelf to be beefy. I made a 2×4 box frame and screwed an oak piece on top. The box frame had to be at a pretty steep angle for the TV to sit at a comfortable viewing angle, so I put another 2×4 behind the TV that the sides screw into. It gives the cabinet more support & keeps the TV from sliding off the shelf.
